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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

festivus

In the MGoBlog Diaries section the Wolverine fan base is represented by two equally important groups: the stat-heads who investigate college football, and the fan-boys who celebrate their achievements. These are their stories.

[gavel sound]

And we're back. It's been a few weeks since a DD column. I used my MGoVacation to watch L&O marathons and a few bowl games with funny names while the denizens focused on more important things, which are Michigan football things.

Fortunately these had a happy year. AC1997 tried to contextualize this 11-2, BCS bowl-winning season of ours (feel free to repeat that sentence a few times before moving on). The thing has a chart, and a bolded alter ego to introduce it. He also created something called a "VASAV" score which sounds like a cool sabermetric acronym but is really just named after the user who suggested a super-simple scoring system for BCS/Rose Bowl seasons by fan satisfaction. 1997 was a 4.0; this was a 1.5.

: Hey, keep getting grades like that 'n you'll be visiting East Lansing a lot more often.

Man Lennie, you are dark sometimes. So Michigan murdered this season, but considering where this program was just 12 months ago, how did such a thing happen? Well we can check the box scores by ST3 – it looks like he's got an entire season in there, right? Or it could be just a bunch of Iron Maiden songs.

Fortunately WolverineBlue has been down in the lab, conducting an autopsy of the Toussaint touchdown that wasn't against Ohio State. Like every other L&O autopsy report, it is unbelievably thorough and straightforward, presenting such a wealth of information if this wasn't for television that would be 90% of the case solved right there. As it is, this forensic analysis proves Fitz should have been ruled in Edit: down 1/2 in short. Virginia Tech fans with screen capture got nothin' on this Diarist of the Weeks (plural):

Exhibit B

The other Diarist of the Weeks is JeepinBen who looked into the personnel on hand and being recruited for Mattison's defense and in a sudden twist of realization, saw that if you look at it like a 3-4 defense instead of a 4-3, just one big guy named Ondre plus lots of linebackers and ends all make sense!

A couple of diaries meant as previews to the Sugar are still relevant to our investigation here. The one by cps2010 is excellent for advanced readers looking to understand the weird-ass, corner-dependent defense that V-Tech runs. Steve Sharik once spent over an hour and a half trying to explain this very defense to me before saying "Michigan will never run it," but you never know when you'll be in a situation where you'll have to quickly execute a base Cover 4 robber. If you plan to re-watch the Sugar Bowl, I highly recommend you read this, then watch Hosley and appreciate how good he is. Also still useful is the extensive head-to-head-ing by CollegeFootball13 between M's season and VT's. And monuMental made a beautiful background:

If you want more evidence, Boyz n da Pahokee flipped the video over to us. Before some a-hole lawyer from you-know-where calls it inadmissible, get your Sugar Bowl Replay, Sugar VOAV, Sugar Preview, 2011 Offensive Highlights, and 2011 Defensive Highlights. So much good stuff in there, from the Herron TDs, to "GUN-der the lights" while wearing a DL, a Roundtree and a WHAAT?, and Robinson eating all that soup, and Jibreel finally corralling Braxton Miller on 3rd and goal.

After the jump, the real McCoy takes it to trial, and the board celebrates FESTIVUS!